In 1930 Max Plowman joined Murry and Sir Richard Rees in developing The Adelphi as a socialist, and later pacifist, monthly; Murry had founded it in 1923 as a literary journal (The New Adelphi, 1927–30); Rees edited it from 1930; Plowman took on the role in 1938. The Adelphi was closely aligned with the Independent Labour Party; Jack Common worked for it as circulation promoter and assistant editor in the 1930s.
Plowman co-founded in 1934 and ran the Adelphi Centre. It was an early commune, based on a farm in Langham, Essex bought by Murry. Short-lived in its original conception, it ran a Summer School in August 1936 that was stellar: George Orwell spoke on "An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas" on 4 August, with Rayner Heppenstall in the chair. Other speakers were Steve Shaw, Herbert Read, Grace Rogers, J. Hampden Jackson, N. A. Holdaway (a Marxist theorist and schoolmaster, and a Director of the Centre), Geoffrey Sainsbury, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Polanyi, John Strachey, Plowman and Common.
By 1937 the commune had collapsed, and the house, 'The Oaks', was turned over to some 60 Basque refugee children under the auspices of the Peace Pledge Union; they remained until 1939.
Read more about this topic: John Middleton Murry